People are the Prize

I’m afraid that we’re inadvertently hurting our efforts when we tell our school community that only physically fighting the attacker is the only form of fighting. Certainly, it’s one way but not the onlyway. When a teacher goes into a lockdown, hides, barricades, or runs from the attacker—isn’t he or she also fightingfor their life and the lives of their students?

Absolutely!

Help us spread the word that everybody fights in a crisis. Please watch and then share this video. Let’s get the word out there—the truth—that in every school attack…everybody fights!

Too many teachers are not receiving the information they need to prevent and survive a crisis because it’s a ‘sensitive topic’.

I hear this a lot and I totally get it.

The thing is though, saving lives is not a sensitive topic. We have to be careful and always clarify that it’s not the topic that is sensitive, just how we present it and we could always do a better job.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a moon pie before, but I’m going to ‘enjoy’ a couple on a lonely mountain top in Korea while watching some guy root through my trash…and the experience is going to teach me something very valuable to remember about our students.

While I’d never force a moon pie on you (or anybody), the lesson learned is one that everyone has to remember!

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We live in a world of full of categories. Your country, state, faith, profession…these and many others may be a category for you. Categories are not a bad thing since they can help us to better understand a person and maybe even to predict their future behaviors.

When it comes to preventing violence, every student falls into one of two categories. Those who will not use violence to get what they want and those who will use violence to get what they want.

In conducting a student threat assessment, you must first determine what category the student falls into–will they use violence or will they not use violence? After that, it’s all about trying to lower the risk level.

I think we fail our students (and make our schools less safe) when we don’t address both elements that are necessary for real student success. Without a doubt, academic success is critical but so is ethical success!

Starting today, never discuss academic success again without also reminding (encouraging, requiring, demanding!) your students that their goal is to achieve both academic and ethical success.

In his fable The Fox and the Scorpion, Aesop attempts to illustrate how people do what they do because of their nature. While there is certainly some merit to this assertion, we can’t fully accept this way of thinking when intervening with a student who is a potential threat.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of just giving up and saying, “That’s just who they are.” We have to do the difficult and try to change a person’s nature.

Why would the school attacker yell, “I hate my life” and then began to shoot at students and teachers?

In this video, I go over some of the actions and behaviors of last week’s school attacker in South Carolina as well as discuss one more alarming commonality that is prevalent among school attackers. Namely, first murdering their parents and/or love ones.